


The First Generation: Jane Doe

by WinterRose16



Series: The Doe Legacy [1]
Category: The Sims (Video Games)
Genre: Epistolary, Legacy Challenge, Multi, Not following Pinstar's rules exactly, Scrapbook Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7792405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterRose16/pseuds/WinterRose16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane Doe is forced into founding a Legacy by her grandmother's will. How does she take it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own only the character of Jane Doe. I am not affiliated with Maxis or Electronic Arts or Origin in any way, shape, or form. I am just playing around in this sandbox and providing some free advertising. 
> 
> Well, for those of you who don't know, The Sims franchise has what is called a Legacy Challenge. Created by Pinstar, you start with one Sim, the biggest lot in your town, and whatever cash is left over. By the end, you should have ten generations of your Sim family (and ghosts of previous generations), a big fancy house, a pile of loot, and a pretty tangled and convoluted plot line that spans SimNation, France, China, and Egypt and brings in everything from zombies to unicorns, pretty much. This is my attempt as I practice for what I want to be my Sims magnum opus: my Arthurian Royal Kingdom Challenge.
> 
> I cheated a little by having Jane use her money to go to college, which I mostly left out because it was pretty darn boring, but I do have some bloopers from it.

_**From the Papers of Jane Doe:** _

I was not happy when I got the phone call. I was asleep in my nice warm bed in my dorm room, and what happened? I got woke up by the damn phone, and I needed a shower and cold meds in the worst way. I am _such_ a night owl, it’s not even funny. I found out it was a lawyer, and that my psycho grandma had died. The most I could sum up was indifference.

Then the lawyer told me that I’d been screwed over seven ways from Sunday by Grandma’s will. I wasn’t surprised by this either. If Mom and Dad hadn’t escaped, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college at all. Even then, Sims State U ate the rest of my inheritance.

But, back to Grandma. She was Mirabella Smith of Willow Creek. Yes, _that_ one. If you’ve read V.C. Andrews, you’ll know that the Smiths of Willow Creek make (well, made, they're all gone now) the Foxworth-Dollanganger clan look sane and cuddly. Anyway, I get called at armpit o’clock in the freaking morning and the lawyer tells me that Psycho Grandma was in debt up to her eyeballs and they had to sell everything but a plot of land in Riverview to pay for it. Combine with the eighteen-hundred simoleons in my bank account that the college hadn’t called dibs on, and yeah, I was screwed. The only reason they couldn’t sell the land was because Psycho Grandma had forbidden it to be sold until my descendants hit generation ten. In other words, I got hit with the Legacy entailment. Fan-freaking-tastic. What is this, the Middle Ages? And of course, since Legacies are so important (Sims everywhere from Al Simhara to Pleasantview rely on them), you can’t fight them. I’m stuck with the land and my cash. Yippee.

For the rest of the semester (my last, thankfully), I researched on the computer. I found out that the Legacy entailment was the only restriction I got stuck with, thank the Watcher. No insistence on a matriarchy or birth order, no restrictions on what I can buy or use, and no having lawyers drop by and evaluate my progress with _points_!

My name is Jane Doe, and I’m the Founder of the Doe Legacy. I’m going to lose my mind.


	2. It's You and Me, Honeybunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane builds a house, starts her career, and finds her husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the Sims franchise, Maxis, Electronic Arts, or Origin. I'm just a fan having fun and telling a story. I am also not connected to the Clue/Cluedo franchise or the 1985 movie (which is the source of the chapter title).

**_From the Papers of Jane Doe_ **

I found out about the stupid legacy entailment back in January of 2009. I graduated from Sims State University that spring with an A and a business degree, so when I got to Riverview, I was able to enter the workforce as a Corporate Drone. That meant I was making eight-hundred-seventy-seven simoleons a day, so over the course of the spring and summer, I was easily and quickly able to go from this:

To this:

In case you’re wondering what the plants were, in the top picture they’re the lettuces I had in my fridge. I decided to plant them because, well, I’d like to learn new skills and master at least three. You could say that being a Renaissance Sim is my life’s goal. Also, I can sell the produce for a quick buck. Not that they actually _produced_ anything!

Some assholes raided my lot during the June full moon, and instead of stealing my stuff, they killed my lettuce plants! Nothing I could say or do could get them to leave. It was like they didn’t even hear me. What in the name of the Watcher _were_ they? It would be years before I got the answer.

I ended up replanting the garden with seeds I got in the mail one day. No lettuce this time, but a red bean, a cortado bean, three mandrake roots, and a basil plant. None of them produced anything until the next year.

That’s the same reason I got the easel actually. Extra money! I got thirty-three simoleons for my first painting.

The other reason I got the easel, of course, was to paint portraits. Again, I don’t have any points to track, but I’d at least like portraits. One for me, one for my spouse, and one for each Heir.

Naturally, I needed to find a man.

My ex-boyfriend, [Anoki Moon](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Anoki_Moon), was definitely out of the question since he was a cheating bastard (after we spent three _years_ together, the asshole!). One of my coworkers, [Hunter Cottoneye](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Hunter_Cottoneye), was interested in me, but he was completely nuts and convinced that the apocalypse was upon us any day now. Not Legacy material in the slightest.

My boss, [Fatima Simovitch](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Fatima_Simovitch), tried to point me in the direction of [Don Lothario](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Don_Lothario). She meant well, but I laughed my head off for three days solid. I heard _why_ he had to leave Pleasantview back in 2004 and while he’d be nice for a good time, I wanted a family, damn it! To have a family, I needed a husband, someone who had a decent career, made a good amount of money, and was willing to take care of children and improve his skills.

So what did I do? I went to the Riverview Summer Festival on Leisure Day, and that was when I met [Ned Lu](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Ned_Lu).

He wasn’t the handsomest of Sims, or the most graceful, but he was brave, he was handy, and he was lucky. So was I, to have him, and we hit it off right away.

Ned and I pretty much didn’t get out of bed for the rest of the summer, and we finally up and eloped that fall. Because of the Legacy entailment, he had to take my last name. He didn’t mind. The good news: he had a stable career as a Fire Safety Instructor and brought home four hundred simoleons a week, and I got honeymoon pay!

“So, is this going to be one of those haphazard Legacy houses, or is there an actual plan?” Ned asked one night in bed. Turns out he wanted to live in the lap of luxury, and he loved the idea of living in a Legacy mansion. We decided to try and make sure that we had a net worth one-hundred-twenty-thousand simoleons before he died, so we worked hard and improved our skills faster than galloping llamas (well, I did anyway. Ned just improved his skills and worked hard). However, that meant that we had no money, because we spent every spare simoleon improving the house and paying the bills.

“Well, there _is_ a plan, but it doesn’t actually involve blueprints, per se,” I admitted. “This is what I got:”

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Honey, that’s a Clue board.”

“I _like_ Clue!” I said defensively. “This and screenshots from the movie are what I’m using as a guideline.”

“But there’s only one floor!”

“The bedrooms go on the second floor, obviously,” I said. “We’re living in what’s going to be the Hall right now, the bathroom will eventually be the Study, the kitchen’s the corridor between them, and besides, it’s a _plan_! It’s not going to be a sprawling mess.”

I’ve seen some of the other Legacy houses from all over the world and let me tell you, some of them look like they came straight from R’lyeh, complete with non-Euclidean geometry. No wonder generation five usually razes everything and starts over from the ground up!

“There aren’t any bathrooms, either,” Ned said.

“We’ll figure out where to put a powder room on the first floor and then we’ll have at least one master suite on the second floor, a full bathroom next to the nursery, and a full bath over by the kids’ rooms,” I said.

“And the secret passages?” Ned wondered.

“Basement. How does a nectar cellar under the kitchen sound to you?”

He whistled. “Wow. Good thing _you_ went to college. I gotta warn you, though, if you name our kids anything like Scarlet, Mustard, Green, Plum, Peacock, or White, I’m outta here!”

“What about Wadsworth or Yvette?” I teased.

“That’s not funny.” He examined the board and looked back at our actual house.

“How are we going to move the garden when we need to build the Lounge?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I grinned at him. "You signed on for this when you married me."

He smiled back. "Yes, dear."


	3. Soon a Duet Will Become a Trio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned and Jane bring in Generation 2--and an uninvited guest!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I legally own copies of The Sims 3 and all Expansion Packs, as well as some stuff packs and Dragon Valley. I am not involved with the creation or advertising of the franchise, nor am I affiliated with EA, Origin, or Maxis. The chapter title comes from "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

**_From the Papers of Jane Doe:_ **

The downside of being married to Ned was that he was fifty years old in December and we needed to try for a baby right away. Waiting until we were more financially stable wasn’t an option, and I needed an Heir pronto. So we threw the birth control away and I found out I was due in June!

The maternity pay was pretty sweet, too. The only problem was that we needed to figure out who would watch the baby—we couldn’t afford to quit our jobs.

We also decided that this was going to be our only baby, and therefore the Heir. We already knew Ned would die before I did, so we wanted to make sure that our baby would be grown and ready to start his or her own family by the time Ned passed.

Ned and I bounced names off each other over the nine months of my pregnancy. As far as family names went, I suggested John and Mary, after Dad and Mom, and vetoed Mirabella on principle. Ned thought that John and Mary made good middle names and still refused to budge on any _Clue_ -related names, so I gave up that fight.

Finally, I decided to honor Ned’s bachelor name of Lu, and came up with Lucas John for a boy and Lucy Mary for a girl. Ned thought it was super sweet.

And Lucy Mary Doe was super sweet too, once June 10, 2010 rolled around and we brought her home from the hospital.

With black hair, my eyes, and Ned’s paler skin, we had made a beauty. Now we just had to raise her right to take the Legacy reins.

Her babyhood seemed to fly by, and before we knew it, Halloween rolled around and Ned went out to get the mail.

I brought my lunch of leftover Goopy Carbonara into Lucy’s room/our dining room, the future Study. It was convenient for us, because we could eat and watch the baby—

I raised my eyes as I saw the thing in the crib with our daughter. “Honey? What the plum is that?”

We’d got into the habit of censoring ourselves while we were expecting Lucy, and never really got out of it for the next several years.

“The doll? The Lotso family sent it as a late baby gift for Lucy. What do you think?”

“It’s ugly.”

If only I’d known.

However, the years went by, and by the time Lucy’s first birthday rolled around, she’d grabbed on to the ugly doll and loved it. She played with the xylophone, the peg box, and the building table, of course, but she loved that thing the most, playing with it and singing to it for hours. And even as she learned to walk, talk, and use the toilet:

She loved that toy the most. She even played with it when I hosted the 2012 office Christmas party!

While she played and learned (and learned and learned, like she was our little genius), Ned and I both had to go back to work.

Ned got a few service awards from City Hall and we both ended up getting promoted a few times. Of course, since Lucy hadn’t started school yet, we had to have a babysitter, and ended up relying on Venessa Dickens.

You know, I never did find out how she’d get away with skipping school to watch Lucy while Ned and I were both at work. She dropped hints that her home life was pretty lousy and she needed the money, but she’d clam right up every time I asked, so eventually I settled for paying her seventy-five simoleons every day, no questions asked. She was a good babysitter, and Lucy was an easy baby and toddler because she was such a couch potato.

The creepers came back to our house once a season, during a full moon. We weren’t the only ones. Other people started to report seeing them too.

Meanwhile, Ned and I poured every spare simoleon we had into the house, selling whatever we painted and even hocking a few wedding presents to pay the bills, and it paid off. By the time Lucy was in kindergarten, we had a perfectly respectable home, with the Hall finished and turned into the dining room, a half-bath between Lucy’s room and the Library, and our master bedroom was the future Lounge (with the master bath where the Dining Room would be).

“It’ll be nice when Lucy’s old enough to get a part-time job,” Ned said.

“Don’t think about things like that already,” I pressed. “Just let her be a kid.”

 “She’s growing up fast enough as it is.”


End file.
